It will be a tough sell. But a bold plan based on pumping up Ontario’s fuel tax represents the best hope of easing the traffic gridlock that threatens to choke the Greater Toronto Area.

“Money has to come from somewhere,” said Anne Golden, head of a special provincial task force given the job of recommending a way forward. “This cannot be done for free.”

She’s right. Recommendations made public by her panel on Thursday would have the average household paying an extra $260 a year for gasoline once proposed new “revenue tools” are fully in place. It’s a substantial outlay. But every penny, raised locally, would go to improved transit and transportation.

If new investment doesn’t happen, that same household will ultimately lose $700 yearly to soaring commuting costs, including gasoline wasted while idling in traffic. Yes, Golden has prescribed expensive medicine. But doing nothing will cost even more.

“Nightmare congestion” looms with population in the GTA and Hamilton expected to swell by 2.5 million in coming decades — bringing a million more cars to the region’s roads, streets and highways. Gridlock already costs the area’s economy an estimated $6 billion each year. That loss is projected to grow to a job-crushing $15 billion by 2031.

There is a better way.

Golden’s task force has produced what it calls “a viable, fair and accountable strategy” to fund an ambitious expansion of public transit and relief of highway congestion. Priority projects include new subway construction in Toronto, faster and more frequent GO train service, a Mississauga light-rail line, and improved rapid transit for Durham, Dundas, Brampton and Hamilton.

With these changes, gridlock can be blunted.

Metrolinx, the province’s agency in charge of co-ordinating transit and transportation, spent years studying revenue tools to fund an expansion it called The Big Move. The agency released its list last May, calling for a region-wide 5-cent per litre fuel tax, a levy on commercial parking spaces, a 1 per cent increase in sales tax, and a toll on lone drivers using high-occupancy vehicle lanes.

It was a fair and balanced approach, but Premier Kathleen Wynne appointed Golden’s panel for a second opinion. It has produced a workable strategy, putting heavier emphasis on the fuel tax while dropping the sales tax hike, as well as the toll and parking space levy. Golden says the toll and levy were complicated and would take too long to implement.

Her approach presents Queen’s Park with two broad choices. Both call for a modest 0.5 per cent increase in the province’s corporate tax. That’s fair since business obviously benefits from faster movement of goods and employees.

The option recommended by Golden would boost Ontario’s gasoline tax by 3 cents per litre in 2015 — and by a penny in every subsequent year — until the tax hike tops out at 10 cents a litre. And it would draw about $80 million from the existing HST.

If that fuel tax proves too rich for the province to stomach, the second option envisions a 5-cent per litre tax coupled with a 0.5 per cent Ontario-wide increase in the HST.

Once fully in place, all this would raise between $1.7 and $1.8 billion a year for transit in the GTA and Hamilton. Additional money would be gathered, as needed, by borrowing against this new income.

In a fundamental departure from revenue tools envisioned by Metrolinx, what Golden proposes would operate Ontario-wide. People in the GTA and Hamilton would pay more for their gasoline, but so would drivers in Kenora, Cornwall and Windsor. And companies all over the province would pay more tax.

Golden was quick to stress that only what’s raised in the GTA and Hamilton would be spent here. Money collected in other communities, about 46 per cent of the total, would go toward covering their local infrastructure needs. Even so, the wide reach of these taxes could make it harder to amass public support.

While it’s true that every town or city has pieces of urban fabric sorely in need of mending, imposing a 10-cent-per-litre fuel tax to get the job done may not be welcome — especially as it comes because the Toronto area has a traffic crisis.

Wynne has said her government’s response will be in its spring budget, and will be fair to all Ontarians. There’s an obvious selling job needed here. People across the province will have to be convinced that they need these revenue tools, their lives will be better and their money won’t be wasted. If that’s done, we have a real chance to keep traffic and the economy moving for years to come.

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